There is a Yeti in the back of everyone’s mind; only the blessed are not haunted by it. ~ old sherpa saying

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

1895 Encounter: Sasquatch on Mt. Rainier

In an eariler post,Sasquatch Inside Mt. Shasta, I mentioned that I remembered reading about an explorer in the 1800s who had an encounter with Bigfoot in Mt. Shasta. I also remember posting about it on my other blog, The OrangeOrb, but I couldn't find the item.

I found the original article, from the 2001 issue of FATE Magazine. I was wrong; it wasn't Mt. Shasta, it was on Mt. Rainier. The article, by Preston Dennett (UFOs Over California, and UFOs Over Topanga Canyon) entitled Early American Mountain Bigfoot, tells the tale of explorer Major E.S. Ingraham and his meeting of a Sasquatch.

Like Mt. Shasta, Mt. Rainier has its share of odd occurrences. Dennett writes that the first white men to summit the mountain, Stevens and Von Trump (in 1870) were intentionally led in the wrong direction by their Native American mountain guide in order to keep them away from the mountain. Kenneth Arnold's UFOs were seen over Mt. Rainier. There are numerous stories of Bigfoot type creatures seen on the mountain.

Major Ingraham had credentials: well known explorer, founder of the Washington Alpine Club; various parts of Mt. Rainier were named after him. He climbed Mt. Rainier several times during his career. Given his reputation and credibility, it must have been quite a risk for Ingraham to write The Old Man of the Crater, in which he writes about his encounters with a Bigfoot that includes, among other things, mysterious glows and telepathic communications with Sasquatch.

The Major encountered Sasquatch inside a cave in the mountain. This lends support to the theory that Bigfoot (and other cryptids and entities) live underground, using caverns and tunnels as routes to get from one place to another. He describes the creature:

The crown of its head was pointed, with bristled hair pointing in every direction."

Very close to the creature now, Ingrahm imitated the Bigfoots movements, which apparently resulted in telepathic communications between the two:

We were in communication. There, in that icy passage connecting the unknown interior of this earth with the exterior, by means of anew medium, or rather an old medium newly applied, tow intelligent beings of different races were enabled to communicate, imperfect at first of course, with each other.

He continued to have "impressions" from what he called The Old Man of the Crater. The creature tried to have Ingraham follow him, but he resisted; when Sasquatch turned to "descend to the hot interior of the earth," Ingraham turned and went back to his companions, who were sleeping all this time.

Ingraham insisted his encounter was true. Dennett wonders if Ingraham's motivations could have been "fanciful," or that he was "trying to perpetuate some of the Native American legends about evil sprits, or perhaps, as he insists, he really did encounter a Bigfoot creature."

We'll never know, and it could be that Ingraham was being merely "fanciful." But, as Dennett points out, Ingraham's encounter does jibe with other encounters of Bigfoot that contain strange lights, telepathy, meeting the creature on mountains (Mt. Shasta, Mt. Rainier,) and inside caverns.

There's another possibility that Dennett doesn't mention; that of the astral plane. Is it possible these kinds of encounters occur, not in concrete "reality" but within some other dimension, like the astral plane? This makes the experience no less real, not at all. It can be argued many UFO-alien encounters take place in this realm as well. Other Bigfoot witnesses have reported encountering Sasquatch in this way: Jack Kewaunee Lapseritis,The Psychic Sasquatch and their UFO Connection Stan Johnson, Lisa Shiel, Backyard Bigfoot:The True Story ofStick Signs, UFOs, and the Sasquatch,Sali Sheppard-Wolford, Valley of the Skookum to name a few. Possibly this is what happened on Mr. Rainier that day in 1895.

Source: Dennett, Preston, FATE Magazine May 2001, Early American Mountain Bigfoot: An Explorer's Account of Sasquatch on Mount Rainier.